Thursday, April 29, 2004

Interesting Web site: A mixed report from the organization Children Now is now available. Fall Colors 2003-04 presents both an overview of the state of racial and gender diversity for the current prime-time season and a five-year longitudinal report on the progress, or lack thereof, that has been made towards achieving a truly diverse prime-time world. A summary of findings from the report indicates "that representations of Asian and Pacific Islander characters declined, Latino and Middle Eastern characters often were typecast and Native American characters were absent. In addition, male characters outnumbered their female counterparts nearly two to one, while females tended to be younger." The findings also concluded that "..as in previous years, the study found that the 8 o'clock hour, when children are most likely to be watching, was the least diverse hour of programming on prime time. Similarly, situation comedies, the most popular genre among kids, were the least likely to have racially-mixed casts."

Monday, April 26, 2004

Interesting Web site: Water for Profit, from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Radio, is a special series on the privatization of water. The series was done in collaboration with The Water Barons an international investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a project of the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity.

There is a tremendous amount of information coming out of Iraq from individual bloggers. Try reading some of these sources in addition to the mainstream media: Future of Iraq Portal. The links in the lefthand column are blogs from Iraqis, civilians in Iraq, U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and people from outside Iraq.

Thursday, April 15, 2004

Interesting Web site:The Information Warfare Site is "an online resource that aims to stimulate debate about a range of subjects from information security to information operations and e-commerce. It is the aim of the site to develop a special emphasis on offensive and defensive information operations" - from the Web site. The site also features at least four year's worth of CRS reports.